Over the years major catastrophes involving loss of life have occurred as a result of inadequate means to effect evacuation or escape of occupants from multi-story buildings. The risk of major catastrophe has become even greater with the advent of high rise buildings. In recent high rise hotel fires people have jumped out of windows and many to their death given the imminent alternative of being engulfed by smoke and/or flames.
The stairwells heretofore provided in buildings in an effort to provide for safe evacuation of occupants have many times proven to be inadequate. Walking down multiple flights of stairs even in hurried manner takes considerable time when time is of the essence. In the heat of escape people tend to lose their composure and rush, giving rise to loss of their footing and so on which may result in serious injury or even death and often in further delay. Of course, there additionally remains the serious problem of evacuating invalids, elderly people and others of minimal mobility such as from apartment buildings and hospitals, in which case the steps are of minimal benefit. The only alternative might be to carry such persons down the multiple flights of steps which inordinately occupies a rescuer's time minimizing the amount of service that he can provide during evacuation. This of course assumes that the rescuer can even reach the occupants requiring assistance.
In addition to stairwells, other types of fire escapes have been devised over the years. In U.S. Pat. No. 1,092,662 there is disclosed a fire escape consisting of an arrangement of chutes situated between each floor of a building in an area divided off from the main part of the building by means of fireproof walls. The fire escape is particularly adapted to be installed in the building when the same is erected presumably as an alternative or in addition to conventional stairwells. In the former case, the building is denied the utility which stairwells provide as an alternate means of passing between floors independently of elevators under normal conditions. In the latter case, the provision of the auxiliary fire escape arrangement would add to the cost of the building while reducing available space for other uses.
Other types of escape devices employing slides or chutes have been employed outside of the building. Typically, these devices are fixed to the side wall of the building for usage only in conjunction with a limited number of emergency exits. Usually the fire escape has associated therewith only one emergency exit per story of the building. Obviously this presents a problem when access to the emergency exit is denied by smoke, flame, etc. Consequently, those people denied access to the emergency exits might then be left with less desirable escape means such as jumping out of windows onto mats or nets or awaiting rescue by fire ladders if the ladder has sufficient length to reach them.
For an example of one escape device for a multi-story building employing a meandering chute, reference may be had to U.S. Pat. No. 4,049,080. The meandering chute extends the full height of the building there being provided an emergency exit in the outer side wall of each story of the building. Although this arrangement might have some practical application in relatively low rise buildings, it is not considered feasible for many of the high rise buildings being constructed today. Obviously considerable cost is involved to provide such a chute extending the full height of a building having thirty, forty or more stories. Such arrangement also would detract from the aesthetics of the building. Moreover, such device does not adequately address the problem where occupants cannot gain access for one reason or another to the emergency exit for the story they are on.
Other chute-type or slide-type fire escapes which have been devised for buildings having relatively few stories can be seen in U.S. Patent Nos. 813,139; 916,100; 932,436; 937,722; 1,555,355; 4,099,596; and 4,167,224. Some of these fire escapes are retractable when not in use while others employ spiral slides or chutes.